Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - May/92

Contributor - Edna Gerstner

Title - A Model Mother

Topic - Parenting

We are very conscious of role models today, and as Mother's Day approaches I would like to focus on a very special mother, a step-mother. Ever since the days of the Brothers Grimm step-mothers have had a very bad press. But this step-mother was one we should all emulate. She was the second wife of the great missionary, William Carey. It is especially appropriate as we celebrate the bicentennial of the modern missionary movement, started by William Carey going to India in 1792.

Most of us are aware of the tragic life of the first Mrs. Carey, who could not cope with the rigors of mission life. On their boat trip to their new home in the jungles William Carey writes this description, "Tigers, leopards, rhinoceroses, buffalos, monkeys swinging from trees, pythons, and deadly cobras, and crocodiles bask on the mud banks." Put yourself in her place, going down the Ganges River with four small children. The final tragedy occurred when their young son Peter died of dysentery. It was a ghastly situation. William Carey was so weakened by the disease himself he could not even hold a shovel to dig a grave for the child. No high caste would pollute himself with the job, and only after great effort was a low caste sweeper available for the grave digging. Delicate Dorothy Carey gave up her hold on sanity, and so for thirteen years, especially the last five, William Carey tenderly cared for a sick wife who twice turned on him to kill him and yet he could not bear to commit her to the inadequate medical facilities.

It was after Dorothy's death that he turned for comfort to the gracious Charlotte Emilie Rumohr. This brilliant Danish lady, already a master of four languages had been taking English lessons from him. She was an invalid also and when William evidenced his interest in her the missionaries, who considered themselves his family, actually signed a petition begging him not to marry her. But he used his own judgment and married her anyway, and she, whom nobody thought would live more than nine months, lived eleven years. Theirs was an idyllic marriage. She was one of those rare women who was ill but not an invalid. She tenderly devoted herself to her husband and to the rearing of the five children who had not known a mother's love since their own mother's collapse.

Upon her death William said of his wife, "if there ever was a true Christian in this world she was one." What a tribute from a husband! It has been said, "Your reputation is what people think of you. Your character is what your family thinks of you."

He also wrote to a son, "Your dear mother feared and lived for God and next to that she lived for me." One of the children, Jabez, wrote to his father on Charlotte Emilie's death, "I little thought that when I left Bengal that I should never see her again and never hear any more that motherly counsel from her own lips which she was wont to give me when near her and which could only have been dictated by the love she bore me. I am grieved that I was not near to minister to her in her sickness nor to receive her blessing."

Charlotte Emilie is a rare model for Mother's Day. She was a woman who was able to keep that delicate balance in family life of love for her husband and love for the children. Too often one or the other gets out of focus in our stressful lives. May we all learn from this lively woman a balanced Mother's Day love.

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